"Automatically configure interfaces on boot"

[withawat3555@gmail.com]

Hi bro!!

I'm currently working on a cloud platform to automate the setup process for a network infrastructure.
Openstack is used to allocate network interface to my opnsense firewall, and it works great! But each time a new opnsense instance is create the interfaces has to be configured manually.

Would it be possible for me to create a script that automatically recognizes all the connected interfaces and configures them to be either LAN or WAN?
800hd4k

For example, if one of the connected interfaces has a 192.0.0.0/8 network, then the interfaces would automatically be configured to a LAN port.

I'm not asking anyone to create a script, just a pointer in the right direction! :)

Any help on this would be greatly appreciated! :)

Thank you

[franco]

The easiest way to automate this is to switch the /conf/config.xml prior to boot although that is no deployment process.... more like predeployment if you need to change the image file. We were discussing cloud-init integration to automate this deployment, but we re not at a point where this can be used.

It's something I want to look at next year in more detail.


Cheers,
Franco

[jinxray]

Hey franco
Is anything changed? Currently facing problem when interfaces getting default addresses in cloud environment and I lose connectivity to virtual machine even through COM console. Downloaded freebsd with cloud-init image and installed with opnsense, but looks like cloud-init cant fetch data from cloud platform. Before opnsense installation, on clear freebsd, metadata fetches. Is there a functionality to autoconfigure interface ips with cloud-init?

[franco]

You seem to be missing a lock on your interfaces. If the cloud instance changes interface names or removes an existing one the system will reset because it thinks the hardware was changed. That's also how the factory reset / default install and recovery works.

There is FreeBSD support now for cloud-init, but not for OPNsense.


Cheers,
Franco

[Patrick M. Hausen]

I have run FreeBSD VMs in clouds that recommended cloud-init without using that. You need a configuration that sets the right external interface to DHCP and has some static user to log in. Works with Digitalocean and Vultr at least. cloud-init is just a way of automatically configuring these things.

For that you need to know the device name of the interface beforehand and configure OPNsense accordingly. It's probably vtnet0.

You can do this by removing the "reboot" command at the end from opnsense-bootstrap.sh before starting it in your local VM. Then change /usr/local/etc/config.xml to match the virtual hardware of your cloud provider.

You might want to look here for ideas about what can be done and how:
https://github.com/punktDe/vagrant-opnsense

Read the "Vagrantfile" - all manipulations of config.xml are done in simple shell commands in the provisioner. You do not need to use Vagrant. Although you might want to once you got a first successful deployment to automate the process for the future.

HTH,
Patrick